How Bad Leaders Get Worse over Time

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2024

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's plenty of advice on how to grow into a better leader. And it takes effort to become more effective. But bad leadership gets worse almost effortlessly, says Barbara Kellerman, a Center for Public Leadership Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. She shares real examples from the public and private sectors of how bad leaders spiral downward, and how bad followership enables that negative trend. She gives her advice for recognizing and avoiding ineffective and unethical leaders. Kellerman is the author of the new book Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers.

Transcript

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0:57.0	When Volkswagen appointed a CEO in 2007, that leader came in with a firm reputation.
1:10.0	Martin Vintercorn was known for unbridled ambition and ruling with an iron fist.
1:16.0	VW set the goal of becoming the number one carmaker in the world.
1:20.0	Vintercorn wanted the German car company to beat Toyota and General Motors in
1:25.0	unit sold profits and customer satisfaction within 10 years.
1:30.0	At first there were big successes, but in 2015 a scandal broke, Emissions Gate.
1:37.0	Volkswagen had created a so-called defeat device.
1:40.0	It let some of its cars meet pollution regulations only when they were tested, not when they were on the road.
1:48.0	Now those few lines of software were not Vintercorn's idea, but his leadership was widely criticized for making them possible.
1:57.0	Looking back, you can point to a weak company board, compliant employees, and an enabling culture.
2:04.0	So if the signs were there, why did no one act on them?
	...

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